2 PhD Positions in Biological Sciences - Chitons and Other Molluscs in Ireland | Queen's University Belfast

Two PhD studentships are available in the Queen's University Marine Lab in Portaferry, Northern Ireland.

Eligibility: only UK citizens and residents are eligible for the full scholarship, though EU residents are eligible for partial funding.

• PhD studentship, Understanding the molluscan tree of life
• PhD studentship, The Arctic enigma: marine species at their temperate limits

Job descriptions: 3-year studentship (fees and stipend).

This research project is in competition for funding with other projects offered by the School. The projects which receive the best applicants will be awarded funding from DEL (Department for Employment and Learning).

If you are resident in the UK or elsewhere in the EU, it is strongly recommended that you refer to the terms and conditions of DEL postgraduate studentships to ascertain whether you are eligible for a studentship covering fees and maintenance or a studentship covering fees only.

Project 1. Understanding the molluscan tree of life

Background and significance of research

The Molluscan family tree has long been a subject of heated debate. Molluscs include a dizzying range of body plans: squids, limpets and worms all descended from a common ancestor, including many with important economic relevance as food, or pests, or invasive species. Molecular phylogenies, anatomy, embyrology, and the fossil record each appear to support conflicting hypotheses. But modern laboratory techniques can reveal startling new insights to even familiar animals; for example, our group recently discovered a new sensory organ in molluscs (Sigwart et al. 2013) and there is not yet enough comparative data to consider the role of these sensory structures as evidence of deeper evolutionary relationships. That gap will be filled by this PhD project. Two recent Nature papers on molluscan molecular phylogeny (Smith et al. 2011, Sutton et al. 2012) called for a modern analysis of morphology to complement molecular data; such an analysis would also be able to incorporate both living and fossil species, and help us to understand the evolutionary origins of obscure as well as economically important species. This PhD project will take a fresh look at one important aspect of this big question.

Research aims

You will characterize the anatomy of select species across the phylum Mollusca, focussing on the three biggest and commercially most important groups - bivalves, gastropods, and cephalopods - and their potential relationship with the obscure but fascinating scaphopods (tusk shells). You will gather data from published literature, collect living speciments from original fieldwork, compare live and fossil species, and gather new anatomical data through a variety of cutting-edge techniques, including dissection, constructing digital 3D models of organ systems, and fine-scale CT scanning. Ultimately this will result in a large cladistic analysis, and many smaller projects along the way.

The project will be supervised by Dr Julia Sigwart (Queen's University School of Biological Sciences)

Project 2. The Arctic enigma: marine species at their temperate limits

Background and significance of research

The marine invertebrate fauna in Northern Ireland includes northern boreal species that are at the southern edge of their range. Such species are naturally vulnerable to environmental change as they may be driven toward the poles by increasing sea temperatures. One such species is the Red Chiton, Tonicella. In fact there are two closely-related species in Britain and Ireland, T. marmorea and T. rubra. This genus includes 12 species in total, in the northern Atlantic and northern Pacific, and most species of Tonicella are specialist herbivores that graze on encrusting coralline algae, although they live at a range of depths from subtidal to intertidal. As a circum-polar genus, Tonicella provides a system for us to examine a number of interesting hypotheses about past connectivity between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans over the last 25 million years of geological time, the role of glacial refugia for establishing present distributions, and predict future responses of these vulnerable species to climate change. This PhD will use Tonicella and other similar marine groups to investigate these questions.

Research aims

You will collect material from original field work and from museum specimens for Tonicella and other appropriate marine taxa. These specimens will provide the basis for molecular and morphoanatomical analyses of phylogeny within the genus, and determine its phylogenetic position within a larger context. Fossils, and the known geological record of Arctic ice sheets, will provide a basis for calibrated time trees, and you will use these to determine whether the centre of origin for the group is in the Atlantic or Pacific, and whether they originated in shallow or deeper water habitats.

The project will be supervised by Professor Christine Maggs and Dr Julia Sigwart (Queen's University School of Biological Sciences) and Dr Bernard Picton of the Ulster Museum, Belfast.

Deadline for applications: 13 January 2014 (to start October 2014)